Many pharmaceuticals are required to be administered by injection. Other pharmaceuticals may be administered orally, but in some cases, there is inefficient absorption into the bloodstream to permit the pharmaceuticals to achieve the intended therapy. Also, with regard to oral administration, many orally administered pharmaceuticals undergo a high degree of destruction by the hepato-gastrointestinal first-pass metabolism. Often the metabolites of the first-pass metabolism cause unwanted biological activity or toxicity. In oral administration, there are variables which cause undesirable variations in the extent of gastrointestinal absorption from subject to subject, especially in the case of some pharmaceuticals; and there are also associated problems of uneven blood levels resulting from an initial large absorption with attendant undesirable side effects or toxicities, and subsequent blood levels which are less than therapeutically optimal.
There has been an increasing interest in transdermal delivery. However, transdermal absorption of a number of pharmaceuticals has not been satisfactorily developed for adequate therapy, since they have not been absorbed transdermally to any significant degree.
Investigations have been carried out to explore the delivery of certain therapeutic agents transdermally by use of iontotherapy. Development of previous reservoir electrode devices have been reported, for example, by Sanderson et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,722,726 and references cited therein.
It is highly desired to provide new and improved iontotherapeutic devices, reservoir electrodes therefore, and iontotherapeutic processes and disposable dosage unit forms for use with the reservoir electrodes and to provide further thereby therapeutic levels of systemically-active pharmaceuticals efficiently with a physiologically-acceptable low electric current.